by Maisey Yates
“You like bad, though,” he said, his eyes fixed firmly ahead, on the divider that kept his driver out of the conversation. “I remember.” And so did he. A slug of desire hit him in the gut. Wrong time. Wrong place.
“Could we not?”
“Sure. Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you’re doing? Because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you’re here in New York. And I don’t think it’s random you ended up doing event coordination for the firm.”
“Oh, no, Mr. ‘it’s genetic,’ it’s your turn first. You tell me who you are, and what your connection to Treffen is. And then you hope I don’t see your name anywhere in the invoices that I snagged.”
“My name is all over it,” he said. “On every single one. My last name, anyway.”
He looked at her, at her waxen face, and felt a twinge of guilt over not just telling her who he was. Not just laying it out. But he felt guilty by association. By blood. And by deed.
No matter how much he might want to absolve himself of this entire situation, he couldn’t. He’d failed to really listen to Sarah. He’d failed to keep her safe.
And now...and now here he was with Sarah’s much beloved sister. Sweet Katy, whom he’d...
Well, yes, he remembered exactly what he’d done to her. In perfect, graphic detail.
He would never forget it.
But then...he wanted to see her response. To gauge whether or not she’d been using him the other night.
Like you weren’t using her? To get your sense of control back through her submission? You sick bastard.
He had been. He’d used her. But he still needed to know what her game was. So he could try to...protect her. Yeah, that was what he wanted to do. Because he’d failed in protecting Sarah. He’d failed her in every way. The most basic of ways. She was dead, and who had taken care of Katy since then?
Yes, they’d gotten a payout. But what then? Money didn’t replace a smile. It didn’t replace the light in someone’s eyes. Didn’t answer the phone when you called.
It didn’t breathe life back into a broken body.
He’d grieved for his friend. But Katy had been grieving a sister. A sister he’d failed. In so many ways. And now he had to try to make it right.
Otherwise...otherwise there really wasn’t anything separating him from his father.
Katy closed her eyes. “Oh...no...please don’t...”
“He’s my father.”
“Oh.” She bent over at the waist, her face between her knees. “I’m going to be sick.” She straightened. “Do you buy women, too? Do you whore them out? Are you a pimp just like your dad? You’re a lawyer, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes. To the lawyer part.”
“And do you advocate for women?” she spat.
“Yes,” he growled. “I do.”
“You’re just like him, aren’t you? Should I be asking for payment for my services? All things considered, your little domination game, my virginity, I think I could have commanded a pretty high price.”
Panic was building inside of him. Even though he hadn’t put every piece together yet, he could feel them locking tight, the picture starting to form. He could tell that what she was saying was true. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You don’t know? Do you expect me to believe you don’t know?”
“I know that my father is a bastard. I know that he...sexually harassed a woman, to the point where she felt so distressed that she... I know he did that to a woman we both cared about. And I suspect there are others and he’s been paying them off.”
“Don’t talk about Sarah,” Katy said. “Don’t talk about caring for her. You’re his son.”
“I am his son, but I didn’t know what he was doing to her.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Why didn’t she tell you? Why didn’t you see? If you cared for her, why didn’t you see?”
Every question hit its target. Because they were questions he’d asked. Over and over again. And he had no answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “No, I do know. Because I was a selfish, entitled asshole who never looked past himself or his own achievements. Because life was always good for me, so I didn’t look for suffering because I’d never really seen it before.” Because he hadn’t wanted to see it. “But it’s not an excuse. It’s just the answer I give myself when I get in bed at night. So I can sleep.”
“Well, I don’t have a neat answer that helps me sleep. So that’s nice for you. I just have to lie there and wonder what they did to her...what they did that was so bad she thought the only way out was to throw herself off a building.”
“My name is Austin Treffen,” he said.
“Great. Now we’re all acquainted.”
“It seems so.” Silence fell between them in the car.
“I don’t think we have anything we need to say to each other.”
“No, we have a lot to say to each other. Starting with why you’re here. Moving on to what it is you think is going on with my father, those women and the payouts.”
“Do you honestly not know?”
“I don’t know,” he insisted.
“Have you had your head up your ass for the past, what? Thirty-five years?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Sorry. Did I wound your ego?”
“I’m not going to run off and get BOTOX. So don’t worry.”
“Yeah, it would make that scowl you have going on a lot more difficult to accomplish.”
“Stop deflecting. Katy, I need to know what you’re here for. What you think you’re going to get from my father.”
“Why should I tell you?” she asked. “You’re his son. Why should I trust you at all with anything?”
“You trusted me quite a lot that night we were together,” he said. “You let me take you to a hotel and tie you up. The fact that you won’t tell me anything now...”
“Stop. I didn’t know who you were then.”
“But I was the same man I am now.”
“Well...I didn’t know that then. So it’s not the same.” She shook her head and looked out the window. “It’s not the same.”
“No. Nothing is the same.”
“You want me to believe that you aren’t like your father?”
“Yes. Sarah was my friend, Katy, and it’s an empty thing to say because my friendship didn’t do anything for her. Not in the end. But I’m trying now. I need to know what you know, and until I do, I can’t risk telling you too much.”
“And you think I can?”
“I think you’re one woman, Katy, going up against a man who has ruined hundreds of women. Women who were more well connected than you. Women who had more money than you. Women who were stronger than you.”
“And you’re going to bring him down with your big muscles? But I can’t because I’m a woman?”
“I’m going to bring him down with a hell of a lot more weight behind me. With connections, with status and money and the inside track to his wife—who happens to have a large amount of influence in the community. And who, if she divorces him, will end up with half of what he has since he had less than she did when he came into the marriage. That’s not the case now, obviously, but back then... Let’s just say things change.”
“And you want to bring him down?”
“Do you?”
“I want his head on a pike out in front of the city gates. Barring that? I’d like to see him rot in jail. For what he did to Sarah. For what I think he’s done to a lot of women.”
“What is it you’re thinking?”
“This may be where I pull a Jack Nicholson and say you can’t handle the truth,” she said.
“Are you trying to protect me?” he asked, something warming inside of him.
“Protect you? Not really. But I’m really not sure you’re going to be able to handle this.”
“Because?”
“Because prostitutes, Austin. That’s where all this has led me. I’ve been working my way arou
nd the edges of his circles for months. As a server first, then as an event coordinator. I’ve talked to people. A lot of people. I contacted a pro bono law firm....”
“Dammit,” he said, putting his head back on the seat. “That was you? Did you not do any research?”
“What?”
“I own that law firm. It’s an arm of Treffen, though I keep them very separate.”
“What?”
“I got your letter. It’s the thing that mobilized me. And my friends.”
“Wow...”
“You—” he said, raising his hand and pointing, shaking his finger like he was a concerned parent or something and he couldn’t seem to stop “—you are a hazard to yourself and to others. What if that had managed to get into my father’s hands?”
“I didn’t sign it. I just wanted to...test the waters.”
“To what end?”
“So that maybe there would be some investigating. So that when I found some concrete evidence I wouldn’t be going in cold.”
“Trying to make it look like more than one person was involved, maybe?” he asked.
“When the system isn’t going to do you any favors, sometimes you have to game it,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Granted,” he said. “However, for all intents and purposes, I’m ‘The Man,’ so if you want to work the system from the inside, you might want to start by giving your information to me. You were going to anyway. Even if it was going to be unintentional.”
“I’ve been speaking to some people. But Stephanie the receptionist was the biggest help. I found her crying one day when I was scoping things out for the party and asked her what was wrong. She’d just been propositioned by your father,” she said, the words dripping with disdain. “He’d asked her if she needed extra money because he knew she had some big student loans and also major credit-card debt. He asked if she felt like he’d helped her, giving her the reception job, working it around classes... Of course, she felt like he had. Then he offered her a full payoff of her credit card if she would go on some...dates. With some of his associates. She agreed and...and it became clear very quickly that these were supposed to be something more than dates.”
Austin felt dizzy, like he might vomit on the leather seats of his very expensive car. “What do you mean?” he asked, knowing full well what she meant.
“She was meant to sleep with them.”
“And?”
“She said no the first time. But it was made very clear that she couldn’t ever do that again. Not if she wanted to keep her job. Not if she ever wanted to get a job after college. At least in any sort of high-powered law firm. She knew too much, so it was either go along with it, keep her job and have her debts paid off...or lose everything.”
“I don’t really want to guess which she chose.”
“She’s working at the reception desk, so it’s pretty clear.”
“So, what? My father is running a full-on prostitution ring?”
“Escort service,” she said. “No sex demanded up front. But the expectation is there. There’s a lot of money, a lot of gifts. And a lot of invoices. Your father is paying for these debts by wrapping them in expenses and charitable donations. He’s shielding the money he’s taking in from it, as well.”
“How many women?”
“Right now? I’m counting about eight if the invoices are complete. And if it’s current.”
“How did you get ahold of the invoices?” he asked.
“Again, Stephanie. She doesn’t want her name on any of this. That’s the thing.... She’s already told me she can’t testify. Her loans are paid off. This is her last term. She’s not bringing her name into this. She wants nothing to do with it. And I’m afraid that’s...by and large what we’re going to find.”
“It seems like the women would want to help bring him down.”
“You would think. But these are all ambitious, smart women. They have goals, and...let’s face it, Austin, scandal like this? It would stick to them. They’re women. And...”
“I know how it works,” Austin said, his heart pounding, the sick feeling spreading through his veins. Like poison. Each pump of his heart making it move faster through him.
“You can see why it’s going to be hard.”
“Sarah?”
She bit her lip. “She sent me a letter before she died. But I didn’t get it until after she was already gone. She said that things were bad at her job. She said that there were...things she was being asked to do that she didn’t want to. That were never supposed to be part of it. It was sort of rambling. I didn’t really...understand.”
“I didn’t, either.” But you could have. You could have asked questions. You could have picked up the phone. You just didn’t want to. Because the truth scared you too much.
He closed that voice down. He didn’t have time for regret. He’d had ten years of it. It was time to take action.
“So yes, I came from a dung-heap mill town in Connecticut. There’s nothing there...nothing but a great depression that never ended. There are jobs that will break your body. There’s mud, and there’s alcohol. And lots of drugs. I left my diner job behind, that life behind, so that I could finally put an end to this. So that I could try and fix this for Sarah, and I found out that it was just the tip of a very massive iceberg.”
“Explain.”
She shook her head. “Men in influential positions. Some of the country’s wealthiest businessmen. Politicians, but then, that’s not too surprising. There isn’t a lot of hard evidence, but there is some.”
He blew out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “You know you’re going to end up with a target on your back.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you hear what you just said? You’re talking about sexual scandal that’s going to touch people in the most powerful positions. Do you know how hard old white guys fight to keep their power, Katy? Do you know just what you’re stepping into here?”
“It’s worth it. It’s for Sarah. It’s for every woman they’ve taken into this, before and since. And all the women who won’t be taken in in the future.”
“And what happens if they get ahold of you?”
“I don’t...”
“Do you think this is some kind of game? Do you think you matter to them at all? They buy and sell women. They reduce them to nothing more than a commodity. They broke Sarah. What do you think your life means to them, Katy? Nothing. You’re just a woman from Crapsville, Connecticut. You’re just a thing. And if they have to break you to save their asses, they will do it, and don’t think for one second they won’t.”
“You don’t honestly think they’d hurt me....”
“Do you honestly think they won’t? Listen to yourself. To what you just said to me. Jason Treffen is a charming man, and I bet he could charm someone even while he cut their throat.”
“You think your own father would...kill me, and you mean that in the literal sense?”
“He’d pay someone to do it,” Austin said, his blood so cold in his veins he thought it might stop flowing altogether. “After what you just told me, I have no reason to doubt it. He thinks nothing of killing someone’s spirit. Why would he stop there?”
“I’m not going to do anything different, Austin. I have to stop him.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but I have a lot more backing me up. Work with me, and I can help. We can help.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Friends. Friends who knew Sarah. Alex Diaz, he’s a journalist. And...Hunter Grant.”
“Sarah’s ex?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“He broke her heart, you know?”
“I know. I think in the end we all did. And now...all we can do is try to fix it.”
“It’s too broken to fix.”
“I know. So we’ll do it for the women who are still here. For the victims he’s left broken but not destroyed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Austin ran his hand over his face and leaned back in the seat. “Great. You can have your revenge, your justice. But you need to be where I can protect you.”
While he was forming the plan, while the words were coming out of his mouth, he wasn’t really sure what he was going to offer.
Until he said it. “You need to come and live with me.”
Chapter Four
Katy stared at Austin, her mouth hanging open. “I what?”
“Come and live with me.”
“No. No, no, no. Hell to the no.”
“Excuse me, I have a call to make.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. And she couldn’t help but stare at his large, capable hands as he dialed the number.
She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Why when she looked at his hands she could feel how it had been when they were on her skin. Gripping her hips. Holding her.
How it had been to feel those fingers in her mouth. And...elsewhere.
“Yes, this is Austin Treffen. Recently, you hosted an event for my father that was coordinated by Katy Michaels.”
The hair on the back of her neck prickled and she shot him a deadly glare.
“She disappeared midway through the event, and we ran out of food and had no one to contact. I spoke to her the day after and asked her about it,” he said, looking at her as he spoke into the phone, his dark eyes burning into hers. “She had no explanation. She just said she was tied up all evening.”
Her face burned as wretched, embarrassed heat flowed through her. Worse than the embarrassment was the quick, assaulting heat of arousal. How the hell could she still be turned on by this guy? And really, really, how could he turn her on even now?
“I found the whole thing quite unprofessional and if this is the way—” He paused. “Yes, I understand she was removed from the Treffen account, but honestly, I don’t know that any of the people in attendance would be inclined to use your event-planning services when... Oh, she’s no longer working for you? In that case, perhaps we can give you another chance. I’d hardly let one bad employee spoil your reputation. Especially as you’ve taken corrective measures. Have a nice day.” He hung up and she exploded.
